Outstanding Photographers

It was a pleasure #addressing, #interacting and #learning with a presence of over 25 educational #leaders, mostly #Chancellors, #Vicechancellors, #Directors of #universities from #India and also #Tech #evangelists from around the #world

The discussions were around #tech enablement and facilitation of educational institutions including #faculty and #students.

One of the exciting things around the conference was the Himalayan trail by flight. We all assembled at 5am to head to the Tribhuvan airport to board the flight. All the edu leaders sounded like school children, excited to see the himalayas from a different perspective, flying over it.

The domestic wing of the Tribhuvan airport was like a market place, crowded, people huddled, interacting, shouting. Only difference was the market is of taking flights.

Thankfully the sun emerged to the utter relief of everyone. The morning sky was more or less clear. Many were circusmpect, as cloudy days are not great for the Himalayan trail.

Finally huddled into the bus, and the tarmac was littered with smaller aircrafts, max 40 seaters. Buddha air, Tara air…entire pantheon of Buddhism could be found on the tarmac, as flight operators. It took some waiting on the tarmac, before we boarded the flight. I managed to capture a few minutes with my mobile cam and here are the clips.

On boarding, every one tried to grab the window seat on either side. I got into the aircraft last, as filming took priority and I was grabbing the visuals on the tarmac littered with these small aircrafts. Thankfully the first seat was empty and I grabbed it. Carrying three cams, Nikon 700, Yashika 4K and Samsung Mobile, I was keen to be at the pole position as anyone there, wondering which side of the flight will be the Himalayan ranges. Once the flight took off, the excitement in the aircraft, with over 25, fifty-year-old youngsters was palpable each trying to peep through those peepholes trying identify which peak is which on the himalayan Map dished out by the airhostesses. The young ladies were kind enough to help each identify, going from one bunch to the other.

Midlfight we were even allowed to get into the cockpit to have a glimpse at the the pilot view of the ranges. The flight started from the western range in the Nepali Himalayas and moved till the east where Sagarmatha, as is everest called, and the flight took a steep u-turn now going over the ranges, half way on the flight. Mt. Makalu, Mt. Everest, Shiva Parvati,….. every one was excited to identify their own peaks and debating which one is the correct one. Mobiles flashing, selfies taken through the flight windows.

In an hours time, as we moved away from the ranges, on our descent, the youngsters settled down on their seats to have a chat with thy neighbours on the magnificent range and the peaks and what a view it was through those tiny peep holes of the dornier!

Back on ground, into the bus, chatting away about the sessions that is ahead of us that afternoon.

It was a memorable trip to Himalayas, once in a life time. Now that I have seen all the peaks, I should head to the tallest one, Mt. Everest, on foot, soon 😉

#Electrifying day it was; #TEDx style keynote on #Creating #Innovation #Ecosystem to enable learners for the future; @ #Vision2030EduConference @MMUMullana. Of course, my TED cannot be staid and straight jacketed 🙂 Theatrics runs in the blood as the body, mind and soul get into action!

With the disruptive world gaining pace, the three things that we need to facilitate the child imbibe are – Keenness to learn, courage to push boundaries and not be worried about making mistakes and humility that can facilitate to build teams and lead. Each one of us need to be welcoming more and more abstractness in problem solving, and take every such opportunity as one to learn and discover, solve and impact.

It was day well invested with over 100 leaders of schools, colleges, universities interacting and sharing. It was a pleasure listening to a few speakers too, who were also talking about need of learner-centric environment in the institutions.

The panel discussion that followed on #TEACHERSofFUTURE, seemed to be a corollary to my talk on innovation.

I am delighted to see very youthful education leaders emerging across the country, who are keen to create best of the learning environments; each one has had an exposure to best of the educational institutions within India or abroad. The entire event has been a brain child of Mr. Vishal Sood, an IIMA Alum, who is now at the helm of the Maharishi Markandeswar University in Haryana. With such young leaders, soon the hinterland too will have very meaningfully engaging learning environments that will integrate the outside world into the class and also take the class out to the realistic external world to engage and impact.

An institution would have served its purpose if and only if it is integral to solving the problems of the society within its vicinity. Imagine if every institution, school or university, solves half a dozen problems every year, what will the nation be. I was delighted to see a few of the principals of schools coming to me and talking about how they intend bring this change in their respective schools.

Feel blessed, for such moments. Life is Fruitful. @careerlauncher @CLEducate @satyaumanandu

Zee business conceived a two part series on cool careers, careers beyond engineering and medical. This is the first one that went on air on March 29,2018. The second in the series will happen immediately after the board results are announced.

This was an hour long programme. The Zee Business channel failed to upload the episode on to their youtube channel, in-spite of promising that they would.

Surprisingly I found that an edited version of the program was put up by one of my co-panelists on the programme, Mr. Sunil GOel, highlighting all of his interventions, but editing out other two panelists R.Sreenivasan and Parveen Malhotra, significantly. Nevertheless I thought, for the young students who wish to go for non-conventional careers, even this truncated episode will be of value.

As a facilitator, mentor and coach, I just want to say that let us all be a good, facilitating human beings first. Rest will follow.

It was an honour to have Prof S Sadagopan, Director IIIT Bangalore, as the chairperson of the Meltingpot2020, a landmark movement, an initiative by CL Educate, that is working towards bringing youthful, research-oriented entrepreneurial education institutions and innovation fostering industry players.

(Prof Sadagopan interacting with Dr. Mashelkar, former chairperson of CSIR, the keynote speaker at MeltingPot2020)

Prof Sadagopan, in his opening remarks spoke about how the time has come for both, educational institutions and industry, to work together with technology playing the role of innovation amplifier to solve problems that will change the nation.

IT as innovation Amplifier

Core competence of most of us who started in 1960s –

We digitized everything over the forty years

Changed industry after industry

2Ts were the largest exports

Tea, to drink

T for textile

IT is the largest now

8bn dollar revenues today

MMT changed how travel industry works

Today innovation has changed how governments functioning

IT has been enabler and amplier of innovation

Kapital needs is much smaller in tech space compared to other spaces

NEXT PRACTICE, from CK Prahalad, one of the foremost thinkers India has produced in the modern times spoke about how next practice is what we need to focus upon

For the youngsters, your time has come, with all humility we can change the world

Our generation went to the US, worked for the best, for the US and Europe

We contributed a lot, that shows up… GOOGLE and Microsoft

SATYAM, SIVAM, SUNDARAM….soon we will have a SIVAM joining Satya of Microsoft and Sundar of Google

Solving problems in India

From 2010 things have changed

Indians solving India’s problems, in India

They have global reach

Tweak the innovations with price-performance parameters

Examples

Railway reservation

A 60 kg human being had to go 16kms for reserving his seat, one day gone

Now we can have it in a jiffy, from anywhere. With millions doing reservations every day; imagine the man days saved, at one-tenth cost

As an introduction to the session, a short film about a toddler playing with an IPad thrown among a few print magazines, was shown; and naturally the toddler liked the response of the icons on the IPAD that open new windows when pressed upon and not the print media that was passive and did nothing on pressing the photos on it! And was told that child of future will naturally make his choices….

I was not in consonance to this way of looking at digitization of education. It is very important to really understand a human being first, to know where to introduce, what to introduce and when to…

About a decade or two, children were branded as couch potatoes addicted to television. A family had one television and every one fought for the remote. Circa 2017, there are as many personalized entertainment gadgets in hand, as as many people in the home !! Children do not want to move out to play….. on the other hand, a young doctor of 24 complains about 72 hours of non-stop duty in the hospital. Imagine the fitness needed from a young doctor ! Will you get that if you thrust the Ipad to a 7-month old?

The human being is the most creative and intelligent being that has ever been created by the almighty. A child has so many intelligences and we intend to confine the child to playing with icons? One of the popular theory of Multiple intelligences propounded by Mr. Howard Gardener, talks about eight of them that a human being is naturally born with –

musical-rhythmic,

visual-spatial,

verbal-linguistic,

logical-mathematical,

bodily-kinesthetic,

naturalistic

interpersonal,

intrapersonal

Unless we do not facilitate the child to blossom in all these intelligences, we lose out on of the greatest creation that god has bestowed on this world – creative, thinking human being.

Of course, digitization can help in personalization of learning, but we should know when we should introduce and what quantum and which features.

A FEW FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS you need to ask yourself, to understand underlying principles of learning-

What percent of what we have been taught we apply? What do we apply?

The audience responded …less than 20%

We apply more of what we learnt in the playgrounds and other arenas where we were involved in action and learnt a great deal.

What percentage we learnt from teacher, what percentage we learn from friends?

Here again, majority of what we learnt is from discussions and interactions, not from a lecture that is made boring by most teachers. Of course, there are brilliant exceptions

How many teachers do we remember fondly and why?

We were very good in those subjects where teacher showed affection and compassion.

We naturally want to perform well in those subjects and took interest

And HOW MUCH do we retain or recall of what we have been exposed to?

What we hear….10% retained

What we read….30% retained

What we see…..40% retained

What we do……70-80% retained

So whatever we create in the learning process, we need to lay emphasis on hard-core hands-on experience that the learner will retain for his life-time.

Why do we need Digitization of Education?

To learn at your own TIME and SPACE

To reach the best of the faculty and learning process to the remotest learner

2001 AD Facilitated Live sessions on various subjects . …even biology, with a lot of animation and graphical representation of processes was used then

engaging content, desktop/laptop

In 2005 created even a virtual chemistry lab – catering to the US schools under no child left behind program

Over the years mobility has come to play a central role

Over the last two decades the digitization processes in CL Educate has helped to

Create enough resources online to engage every learner

conceptual learning, demonstrating the concept

applying to understand

practice to master

engaging with fellow learners to feel good and also share and learn
– discussion rooms, forums,
– gaming!

Ability to facilitate upward of 3000 students in a single session, at times

Enough Success stories created
– across the segments
– study at home students CAT/ LST…
– schools …using

What is the Role of a teacher in the digitized world? One has to be a
– An eager learner all the time;
– courage to fail as he pushes his boundaries
– Have humility to unlearn and learn, even from students
– Ability to be an ideator, generate ideas and implement them
– Of course a facilitator to even those who are learning from huge geographical distances
– Create MOOCsWhat sort of Impact on learners in CL Educate endeavours– test prep … Night classes, huge numbers attend to these classes every day from comfort of home
– any time anywhere… having mobile resident modules as well as ability to log into live sessions even while on the move
–

What Future trends do you see…..

Disruptive technologies will bring huge shifts in the entire learning cycle. We will see the impact of a few of the following technologies very soon..
– virtual reality, augmented reality
– machine learning
– deep learning

I was part of two sessions, one as a panelist and the other as a special invitee… Here is my notes – Pre-event, during Event and post thoughts…

PANEL

Edupreneurs: Revolutionising the Effectiveness of Education Delivery Systems (How can edupreneurs work in a dichotomic market like India to merge the chasms between the organized and highly unorganized education sector in the country, mainly higher education? Building sustainable businesses is the key to being a successful entrepreneur. How should entrepreneurs and institutes walk away from working in silos and leverage each other’s strength in creating a robust education system?

Only 18% graduates are employable in India
91% software professionals lack programming and algorithm skills while 60% lack domain skills
71% lack soft and cognitive skills while 73% lack English speaking and comprehension skills
57.96% have poor analytical and quantitative skills
For core jobs in mechanical, electronics/electrical and civil jobs, only a mere 7.49% are employable

The session was supposed to be on higher-education, but the panel felt that the continuum from school to university has similar challenges and reforms are needed across the segments. Also opportunities and investment needs do exist across. So the pre-session discussion covered the entire spectrum.

Pre-event notes of each of the panelists..

Issues I noted down ..

– Democratization of Learning and its access
– Contestability of markets, access to Universities
– Digital technologies and creating impact
– Mobility and the influence in learning; Global Mobility
– Integration with industry; Industry funding research
– Opportunities for entrepreneurs and Funding possibilities

– Life-long LEARNERS, COURAGE, HUMILITY : Key, How to instill?

Gopal Devanahalli wanted to talk about

– I would like to focus on higher education and continuing education for working professionals.
– Changing learning needs of working professionals – esp in certain industries like IT
– Online courses & types of courses that are relevant to the learners
– The effectiveness of the online delivery model and how to make it more effective.
– Regulatory issues

Prachi Jain Windlass wanted to talk about the following –

– Opportunity areas in K12 education, college entrance and career readiness.
– Opportunities for collaboration and leveraging the ecosystem. Many of our portfolio companies: Avanti, Convegenius and OnlineTyari are taking this approach. understanding their core and leveraging the ecosystem for non core areas.
– Our experience in breaking down the silos in the govt education system, and the role that private sector players can play, risks involved.

– Why cannot the government see education as any other industry? With challenges of access and quality existing all across..

Promote PPP models across

Engage and bring in private partners to collaborate in school and university systems

Use technology to improve training of teachers in enriching content, pedagogy and all processes

….

Other Issues discussed across panels – My notes

Is the nation ready for only digital? Is that trend every where?
– hybrid model is the most successful one
– engaging is the key, mentoring, giving the confidence

Lessons from failures? Key to success
– Team with vision
– sustainable relationship within and with customer
– respect with disagreements in board room and among the team members

Skill education went through cycles.. now we are in the third..
A. IT education – 80s and 90s
B. Sales upgradation – 2000 onwards..
C. now vocational? Entrepreneurship
– quality of higher education is lacking
– rote to conceptual learning, how will we make it happen
– concept of job, loyalty shifting
– nature of learning will have to shift
– propensity to entrepreneurship
– learning to learn paradigm

How long does it take to create an overnight success? For John Hanke it’s taken him 20 years to create Pokémon Go.

This week, the Pokémon Go app has broken all records, with 10 million+ downloads in the first week, exceeding Twitter in daily active users, and with higher average user time than Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram & WhatsApp.

How did John Hanke create such a massive overnight craze? Here’s the 10 times he levelled up in his lifetime to reach Pokémon Go:

1st Level up: In 1996, while still a student, John co-created the very first MMO (massively multiplayer online game) called ‘Meridian 59’. He sold the game to 3DO to move on to a bigger passion: mapping the world.

2nd Level up: In 2000, John launched ‘Keyhole’ to come up with a way to link maps with aerial photography, and create the first online, GPS-linked 3D aerial map of the world.

3rd Level up: In 2004, Google bought Keyhole and with John’s help, turned Keyhole into what is now ‘Google Earth’. That’s when John decided to focus at creating GPS-based games.

4th Level up: John ran the Google Geo team from 2004 to 2010, creating Google Maps and Google Street View. During this time, he collected the team that would later create Pokémon Go.

5th Level up: In 2010, John launched Niantic Labs as a start-up funded by Google to create a game layer on maps. John explains why he called it Niantic:

“The Niantic is the name of a whaling ship that came up during the gold rush and through a variety of circumstances g hv bot dragged on shore. This happened with other ships, too. Over the years, San Francisco was basically just built over these ships. You could stand on top of them now, and you wouldn’t know it. So it’s this idea that there’s stuff about the world that’s really cool but even though it’s on the Internet, it’s hard to know when you’re actually there.”

6th Level up: In 2012, John then created Niantic’s first geo-based MMO, “ingress”:

John explains: “In the case of Ingress the activity is layered on top of the real world and on your phone. The inspiration was that it was something that I always used to daydream about while I was commuting back and forth from home to Google.”

“I always thought you could make an awesome game using all the Geo data that we have. I watched phones become more and more powerful and I thought the time would come that you could do a really awesome real-world adventure-based game.”

7th Level up: In 2014, Google and the Pokémon Company teamed up for an April Fools’ Day joke, which allowed viewers to find Pokémon creatures on Google maps. It was a viral hit, and got John thinking the idea could be turned into a real game.

8th Level up: John decided to build Pokémon Go on the user-generated meeting points created by players of Ingress, and the most popular became the Pokéstops and gyms in Pokémon Go:

As John says, ”The Pokéstops are submitted by users, so obviously they’re based on places people go. We had essentially two and a half years of people going to all the places where they thought they should be able to play Ingress, so it’s some pretty remote places. There are portals in Antartica and the North Pole, and most points in between.”

9th Level up: John raised $25 million from Google, Nintendo, the Pokémon Company and other investors from Dec 2015 to Feb 2016 to grow a team of 40+ to launch Pokémon Go this year.

10th Level: John and his team launched Pokémon Go on July 6th in USA, Australia and New Zealand. Since its launch, Nintendo’s share price has risen $12 billion, and the app is already generating over $2 million daily in in-app purchases, making it an overnight phenomenon.

The overnight success of Pokémon Go has taken John Hanke 20 years to create. Throughout these 20 years, while he had a big vision of a game layer over the world, he didn’t know what form it would take. At every step, he just focused at his next level up.

At each new level, he had new powers, new team members, and new items in his inventory…

Are you, like John, treating your own entrepreneurial journey like one big MMO?